The present invention relates generally to a vending machine for vending age-restricted products, and specifically to a vending machine that preferably uses a customer""s credit card to obtain age verification information from a consumer reporting agency for allowing or disallowing point-of-purchase transactions.
Most, if not all, states impose minimum age requirements for the purchase of certain products such as alcohol, tobacco products, and other age-restricted products. In order to purchase such products, the customer traditionally must present identification to the seller to verify his or her age prior to the transaction. The inability to verify the customer""s age prevents age-restricted products from being sold in vending machines. This verification process is particularly problematic in the vending machine industry since vending machines, by their very nature, involve unattended point-of-purchase transactions. Some examples of prior approaches to this problem or related problems can be found in the following U.S. patents, all of which are incorporated herein by reference in their entirety: U.S. Pat. Nos. 4,884,212; 5,139,384; 5,146,067, 5,273,183; 5,352,876; 5,371,346; 5,450,980; 5,523,551; 5,641,050; 5,641,092; 5,647,505; 5,696,908; 5,722,526; 5,734,150; 5,774,365; 5,819,981; 5,859,779; 5,927,544; 5,988,346; 5,147,021; 4,982,072; 4,915,205; and 4,230,214.
Some prior art vending approaches, such as that of Sharrard, U.S. Pat. No. 5,722,526, have contemplated using drivers licenses or other identification cards to verify the customer""s age. In the Sharrard system, a customer inputs money into the vending machine and makes his or her selection. Thereafter, the customer is prompted to input an identification card such as a state government issued identification card or a drivers license containing the customer""s birth date. The vending machine either optically reads and interprets the written birth date on the face of the card, or reads the birth date data from a magnetic strip contained on the back of the card. A processor unit compares this data with the present date that is keyed into the vending machine by its operator, and determines whether the customer is of a sufficient age to purchase the product.
However, common forms of identification often do not have data written or encoded on them indicative of the user""s age or birth date. Moreover, some forms of identification may not have magnetic strips, such as drivers licenses which may or may not have a magnetic strip depending on the state at issue. Finally, it is not a simple matter to optically read and interpret written birth date data, a process that involves complicated scanning and data-interpretation technology. These shortcoming render the Sharrard approach difficult to commercialize.
Some prior art approaches such as U.S. Pat. No. 5,927,544, issued to Kanoh, suggests that age information can be xe2x80x9crecorded on the [credit] cardxe2x80x9d to verify a vending customer""s age for the purpose of vending age-restricted products, see Kanoh, Col. 4, ll. 55-58, but the present inventors submit that such information is in fact rarely present on a standard credit card. Although consumer reporting agencies, such as TRW and Equifax, and other credit card companies such as VISA or MasterCard, store information in databases, for a large number of consumers, conventional vending machines are unable to access such information to verify the age of a purchaser. Those prior art vending machines that have connectivity to such databases contemplate using the database to verify credit or password information, but do not disclose or suggest using such databases to verify age. See Kanoh, Col. 4, ll. 37-42 (noting that the microprocessor in his vending machine enables xe2x80x9ca credit card company to check credit card numbers, personal identification code numbers, and other data via a communications link,xe2x80x9d but not mentioning age data).
The invention meets the above needs and overcomes the deficiencies of the prior art by providing an improved vending machine that preferably uses a customer""s credit card to obtain age verification information from a consumer reporting agency to allow or disallow the purchase of an age-restricted product. Briefly described, in a preferred embodiment, a customer first inputs customer information, preferably a credit card number, into the vending machine. The vending machine next obtains permission from the customer to use the customer information to retrieve the customer""s age. If permission is granted, the age data is either retrieved from a server farm containing the age of the customer corresponding to the credit card, or is retrieved via modem from a third party database, such as a consumer reporting agency database. Additionally, the modem connection allows the creditworthiness of the credit card to be checked via access to a credit card company database. If the age and credit card of the customer can be verified in this fashion, the vending machine then vends the age-restricted product to the customer.